By Charlotte Bronte Red by Stephanie Poppins Music by John Miles Carter Chapter 10 Dr.
John Madame Beck was a most consistent character,
Forbearing with all the world and tender to no part of it.
Her own children drew her into no deviation from even the tenor of her stoic calm.
She was solicitous about her family,
Vigilant for their interest and physical well-being,
But she never seemed to know the wish to take her little children upon her lap,
To press their rosy lips with her own and gather them in a genial embrace,
To shower on them softly the benign and caress,
The loving word.
I have watched her sometimes sitting in the garden,
Viewing the little bees afar off as they walked in a distant alley.
I know she was often nervous,
But if the youngest,
A puny and delicate but engaging child,
Chanced to spy her,
Broke from its nurse and,
Toddling down the walk,
Came all eager and laughing and panting to clasp her knee,
Madame would just calmly put out one hand so as to prevent inconvenient concussion from the child's sudden onset.
Prends garde,
Mon enfant,
She would say unmoved,
Patiently permitted to stand near her a few moments more,
Then without smile or kiss rise and lead it back to its nurse.
Her demeanour to the elder skull was equally characteristic.
This was a vicious child.
Quelle peste que cet désirer,
Quel poison que cet enfant l'a,
Were the expressions dedicated to her,
Alike in kitchen and in schoolroom.
Amongst her other endowments she boasted an exquisite skill in the art of provocation,
Sometimes driving her nurse and the servants almost wild.
She would steal to their attics,
Open their drawers,
Wantonly tear their best caps and soil their best shawls.
Although Madame never did once,
I believe,
Tell her faithfully of her faults,
Explain the evil of such habits and show the results which must thence ensue.
She had learned to bring falsehood to the aid of theft and would deny having touched the brooch,
Ring or scissors,
But Madame would send Désirer out for a walk and profit by her absence to rob the robber,
Rather than challenge her herself.
The second child was said to be like its dead father.
Certainly though the mother had given it her healthy frame,
Her blue eyes and ruddy cheek,
Not from her was derived its moral being.
It was an honest,
Gleeful little soul,
But one day it bethought itself to fall from top to bottom of a steep flight of stone steps and when Madame hearing the noise issued from the salle à manger and picked it up she said quietly,
Cet enfant est un os de cassé.
At first we hoped this was not the case,
But it was however to be true.
One little plump arm hung powerless.
It appeared Madame did not find the family surgeon at home when inquired,
But that mattered not.
She sought until she later had on a substitute to her mind and brought him back with her.
Meanwhile I had cut the child's sleeve from its arm and put it to bed.
We none of us looked very scrutinisingly at the new doctor when he came into the room,
But Madame appeared taken.
Dr Pouloul is my very good friend,
Said she in perfect English.
Then he promptly went to work.
His whole general appearance,
His voice,
Mien and manner wrought impressions in his favour.
When you looked well at him and when a lamp was brought in,
You saw that,
Unless Madame Beck had been less than woman,
It could not well be otherwise.
This young doctor had no common aspect.
His stature looked imposingly tall in that little chamber and amidst that group of Dutch made women,
His profile was clear,
Fine and expressive.
He had a most pleasant character and so had his mouth.
His chin was full,
Cleft,
Grecian and perfect,
And as to his smile,
One could not in a hurry make up one's mind as to the descriptive epithet it merited.
There was something in it that pleased,
But something too that brought surging up into the mind all one's foibles and weak points.
All that could lay one open to a laugh.
Yet the child liked this doubtful smile and thought the owner genial.
Much as he had hurt her when operating,
She held out her hand to him to bid him a friendly goodnight.
Then he and Madame went downstairs together,
She talking in her highest tide of spirits and volubility,
He listening with an air of good-natured amenity.
I noticed that though he spoke French well,
He spoke English better.
He had,
Too,
An English complexion,
Eyes and form.
As he passed me in leaving the room,
Turning his face in my direction one moment,
Not to address me but to speak to Madame,
I most necessarily looked up at him with a recollection which had been struggling to form in my memory.
This was the very gentleman to whom I had spoken at the Bureau,
Who had helped me in the matter of the trunk,
Who had been my guide through the dark.
Listening as he passed down a long viestibule into the street,
I recognised his very tread.
It was the same firm and equal stride I had followed under the dripping trees.
It was to be concluded that this young surgeon-physician's first visit to the Rue Faucette would be the last.
The respectable Dr.
Palloux being expected home the next day,
There appeared no reason why his temporary substitute should again represent him,
But the fates had written their decree to the contrary.
Dr.
Palloux had been summoned to see a rich old hypochondriac,
And so it remained therefore for the new doctor to continue his attendance at the Rue Faucette.
I often saw him when he came,
For Madame would not trust the little invalid to Trinet,
But she required me to spend much of my time in the nursery.
What surprised me was the child Fiffine insisted on calling the young man Dr.
John,
And we all took from her the habit of addressing him such,
Until it became an established custom.
Then,
No sooner did Fiffine emerge from his hands as well again,
Than the other child,
Desiree,
Declared herself ill.
That possessed child had a genius for simulation,
And captivated by the attentions and indulgences of a sick room,
She came to the conclusion that an illness would perfectly accommodate her tastes,
So she took to her bed accordingly.
She acted well,
And her mother still better,
For while the whole case was transparent to Madame Beck as the day,
She treated it with an astonishingly well assured air of gravity and good faith.
Every day,
On this mere pretext of a motive,
Dr.
John gave punctual attendance.
Madame always received him with the same impressement,
The same sunshine for himself,
The same admirably counterfeited air of concern for her child.
Then Dr.
John wrote harmless prescriptions for the patient,
And viewed her mother with a shrewdly sparkling eye.
Madame caught his rallying looks without resenting them,
She had too much good sense for that.
Supple as the young doctor seemed,
One could not despise him.
This pliant part was evidently not adopted in the design to curry favour with his employer,
While he liked his office at the pension at,
And lingered strangely about the roof or set,
He was independent,
Almost careless in his carriage there,
And yet too he was often thoughtful and preoccupied.
It was not perhaps my business to observe the mystery of his bearing,
Or search out his origin,
But placed as I was,
I could hardly help it.
He laid himself open to my observation,
According to my presence in the room,
Just at that degree of notice and consequence a person of my exterior habitually expects,
That is to say,
About what is given to unobtrusive articles of furniture,
Chairs of ordinary joiners' work,
And carpets of no striking pattern.
Often while waiting for madame he would muse,
Smile,
Watch or listen,
Like a man who thinks himself alone.
I meantime was free to puzzle over his countenance and movements,
And wonder what could be the meaning of all that peculiar interest and attachment,
All mixed up with doubt and strangeness,
And inexplicably ruled by some presiding spell,
Which wedded him to this demi-convent secluded in the built-up core of a capital.
He,
I believe,
Never remembered I had eyes in my head,
Much less than a brain behind them.
Nor would he ever have found this out,
But that one day while he sat in the sunshine,
And I was observing the colouring of his hair,
Whiskers and complexion,
An idea,
New,
Sudden and startling,
Riveted my attention with an over-mastering strength and power of attraction.
I saw his notice was arrested,
And that it had caught my movement in a clear little oval mirror fixed in the side of the window recess.
Though of so gay and sanguine a temperament,
He was not without a certain nervous sensitiveness,
Which made him ill at ease under a direct,
Inquiring gaze.
Mademoiselle does not spare me.
I am not vain enough to fancy it is my merits which attract her attention.
It must then be some defect.
Dare I ask what?
I was confounded,
As the reader may suppose,
Yet not with an irrecoverable confusion,
Being conscious that it was from no emotional and cautious admiration,
Nor yet in a spirit of unjustifiable inquisitiveness,
That I had incurred this reproof.
I might have cleared myself on the spot,
But would not.
I did not speak.
I was not in the habit of speaking to him.
Suffering him then to think what he chose and accuse me of what he would,
I resumed some work I had dropped,
And kept my head bent over it during the remainder of his stay.
There is a perverse mood of the mind which is rather soothed than irritated by misconstruction,
And in quarters where we can never be rightly known,
We take pleasure,
I think,
In being consummately ignored.
